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This is for @fenrir_71 who may be more like me than anyone else on this accursed website than he will ever know.
I didn't grow up around any symbols of white supremacy.
I didn't grow up around any symbols of white supremacy.
Northern California, the SF Bay Area in particular, Palo Alto (home to Stanford) in specific, weren't exactly hotbeds of naked and unabashed racism.
No one, and I mean NO ONE that I knew or wanted to associate with thought the Confederate battle flag was anything more than a symbol of hatred and oppression. That doesn't mean that we weren't surrounded by racism in action, though.
I distinctly remember wondering why the residents of East Palo Alto (predominantly African American) tried so damn hard to get their kids into Palo Alto High School (at the time legitimately one of the best public school systems in the nation) by going so far as to have a…
…friend or relative "lend" them their address. You see, EPA was, at the time, an unincorporated section of San Mateo County. Palo Alto is in Santa Clara County. Kids in EPA went to Menlo-Atherton by agreement.
M-A had a helluva reputation (not good) despite Atherton being one of the wealthiest enclaves in the nation. But Atherton kids didn't attend public school, nope. They went to prep schools. The rep came from the EPA kids. Who were just kids.
Growing up relatively poor and without privilege.
EPA was were the preppy Palo Alto boys drove to score weed.
EPA was were the preppy Palo Alto boys drove to score weed.
"Drive up drugs," where you turned into an alley between stores and half a dozen arms would extend into your car holding sandwich bags (pre-ziplock days, that's how old I am) full of an eighth or quarter of an ounce of weed. Usually $20 or $35.
You just hoped that your dumb white ass wouldn't get ripped off by a bag full of oregano or some other herb. But that was the extent of what most of us knew about EPA. EPA was dangerous (not really, thought, in retrospect). Just dangerous by perception.
Dangerous by being... poorer and darker, which played right into all the stereotypes.
So while I was aware of structural racism right there in my hometown, it didn't make me woke. I was sensitive and open to multiple cultures as a kid.
So while I was aware of structural racism right there in my hometown, it didn't make me woke. I was sensitive and open to multiple cultures as a kid.
One of my better friends in 4th grade was the son of Vietnamese refugees - "boat people" - who was named Hung Tran. I didn't care that Hung was somewhat different. He was fun. And interesting. And talented.
He could seriously play the piano and we liked to draw fighter planes and ships together. 4th grade boy stuff. But I always wondered why his house smelled... different. It wasn't later that I discovered that it was rice starch. It permeated everything.
Despite having a good friend like this later on I still would crack jokes about Asians not being able to drive worth a damn. That stopped a long time ago, really by the time I was out of high school. Being a racist was never my thing.
But that's the rub of being white - those old racist thoughts don't ever leave your brain once you've been exposed to the racist club. You see the world, hear the fucking jokes in your head, and are ashamed.
As teenagers we were able to distinguish the "real" racists in our neighborhood, those that made no bones about using ethnic slurs from the "dabblers." We were slight dabblers. But that's no less racist.
Pretty much everyone over a certain age has bought lock, stock, and barrel, the construct of racism whether we use it for good or evil.
Breaking free of that construct remains our modern day white man's burden.
Breaking free of that construct remains our modern day white man's burden.
That which we once foisted unto others born without the genetic fortune to be slightly less rich in melanin is now the burden we're cursed to carry, reject, and hate with scorn. But the rejection and scorn sadly cannot lift the curse. Nor could being a "woke" white guy.
Nothing can make up for centuries of exploitation that made me the privileged, modern man that I am.
